They proclaimed themselves to be Cymry- fellow countrymen-but they fought one another as fiercely as they did their English neighbors, and had carved three separate kingdoms out of their native soil. They were a passionate, generous, and turbulent people, with but one fatal flaw. They called it Cymru and believed themselves to be the descendants of Brutus and the citizens of ancient Troy. Theirs was a land of awesome grandeur, a land of mountains and moorlands and cherished myths. After a marriage of political benefit to a prince of Wales, Llewellyn, Joanna's eyes are opened more to the differences between the Norman conquerors and the Welsh, whose ideas of marriage and inheritance appeal to her.Riveting, a hard-to-put-it-down book of more than 700 pages, though it does not read as a typical 'chunkster'. At first, King John is a somewhat sympathetic character, as Penman paints his picture through the eyes of his illegitimate daughter, Joanna. In this first of a trilogy (they can be read separately), we are immersed in the Angevin dynasty politics and intrigue, based mostly in 12th and 13th century England, Normandy, France, and Wales, and come to know the powerful people of that time.

I also appreciate her skill in fleshing out the characters of our past, making them much like people we know today.Here Be Dragons is one of this author's first works, written about 30 years ago, and it's a keeper. One of the things I like about Sharon Kay Penman is her ability to write about history in a clarifying way, without making it confusing.

Here be dragons by sharon kay penman